Apple makes some beautiful products, but they also come with a little baggage. The company has been criticized in the past for having its iPhones manufactured overseas . CEO Tim Cook announced today that the company was making a big investment to manufacture more computers in the United States and create jobs for American workers.
Cook, in an interview with Brian Williams on Rock Center, said:
“We’ve been working for years on doing more and more in the United States. Next year, we will do one of our existing Mac lines in the United States.”
Cook didn’t give any exact numbers about how many jobs he expects to create in the United States, but he did say that he felt a responsibility to be a job creator.
Cook said:
“I don’t think we have a responsibility to create a certain kind of job. But I think we do have a responsibility to create jobs.”
CNN reports that Apple will be investing $100 million to move more manufacturing to the United States. Cook said in a previous interview with Businessweek that the computers won’t won’t necessarily be manufactured by Apple. Instead, the company will be “working with people, and we’ll be investing our money” to get the computers made.
Bloomberg reports that Apple manufactured most of its products in the United States until the 1990s when the company moved manufacturing overseas to China. Cook said that many Apple components are still made in the United States and that he isn’t worried about higher manufacturing costs.
Apple’s CEO said that the reason several jobs went overseas is because that’s where he found skilled workers. Cook is hoping to bring those talents back to the United States.
Cook said:
“It’s not so much about price, it’s about the skills, etc. Over time, there are skills that are associated with manufacturing that have left the United States. Not necessarily people, but the education system has just stopped producing that. It’s a concerted effort to get them back.”